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The first time it happens, Fareeha feels like a sickness has latched itself inside her ribs.
It’s just tea, but it happens. Mother finds Winston’s re-supply crates and invites Angela to sit with them on Gibraltar’s helipad, watching the waves shiver all the way down to the horizon. There are gooey triangles of baklava, and she even produces a pitcher of iced tea. As if she’d ever make cold tea. Ever. Angela loves it, though, and Fareeha doesn’t remember telling Mother that.
“This is wonderful!” Angela leans back, long fingers curled around her glass. Fareeha pours water from the kettle for her cup and Mother’s.
“Mm, it’s too hot.” Mother sets her cup down and reaches across to caress the rim of Angela’s glass. “Do you mind?”
At Angela’s nod, she dips her fingers inside and comes out with an ice-cube. After dropping the ice in her tea, Mother sucks the chill from her fingers. . .locking her gaze on a wide-eyed Angela. They smile and chuckle at each other, and Fareeha could drop through the platform right onto the jagged rocks, be swept out to sea, and maybe forget that her mother had been flirting. With Angela. And doing a damn good job of it.
...
The second time it happens, Fareeha hears it over the comm. They’re patrolling, clearing the streets alley by alley, and her mother, a woman who reprimanded everyone for the slightest non-essential radio chatter, starts a conversation that has nothing to do with the mission.
“Your staff makes a pretty sound, Angela, like music,” she says, warmly.
The rest of the team is silent as Mercy clicks on.
“I’ve always thought it sounded a little ominous.”
“Like siren’s song, yes I could see that,” Mother replies. “There’s an old folktale about El Naddaha, a spirit of the Nile, that would appear to men in the form of a beautiful woman. She’d sing, draw them into the river to their doom.”
Angela’s hums thoughtfully in her earpiece, making Fareeha flush.
“Just men?” she says.
“Hmm. As far as I know,” Mother answers. There’s white noise on the open comm, and she fills it with her husky musing. “Maybe all the women who went in after her came out with different stories. Ones with a stronger rating.”
Angela laughs. It’s a melodic sound that is, to Fareeha’s growing misery, only enhanced by her mother’s rich voice.
...
She doesn’t wait for a third time.
“Stop it,” Fareeha says at her mother’s shoulder. “Just. . .stop.”
Braiding her white hair in the mirror, Mother says flatly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Become this. Don’t become that. Fareeha watches their faces, side by side in the mirror, and wonders how much of what she sees there is her future. Mother never complains about being alone, never talks about her private life. What else is she to think?
Fareeha sinks into a chair beside the vanity.
“People keep telling me ‘You must get that from your mother,’” she mutters, then gestures up and down at the woman herself. “Apparently, I didn’t get this. This talent you have for. . .seduction.”
“Talent has nothing to do with it.” Mother cuts Fareeha a sideways look.
“So this thing with her is fun for you?” Heat invades her cheeks. She sits forward. “You hate games. You wouldn’t even play Chutes and Ladders with me when I was a kid.”
Slowly, with crushing precision, Mother finally turns from the mirror to look at her. “Is this because of Angela?”
Fareeha’s mouth snaps shut, before the angry twelve-year-old can speak again, but to her chagrin, as she looks at the dark, smart twinkle in her Mother’s eyes, she knows the bait’s already been swallowed. Mother leans forward to cover Fareeha’s hands with her own.
“El Naddaha is calling, habibi,” she says, too gentle for any Amari woman. “Don’t wade when you should dive.”
Fareeha looks down. “That’s not a romantic fairy tale, mother, it’s something you tell children to keep them from drowning.”
Mother pulls a sarcastic look, then settles her scarf over her hair.
“Either way, you’re too old to be scared of it.”
It’s some salty medicine, Fareeha thinks, for a problem that’s got nothing to do with her mother. But that patented Amari cure, delivered by needle or word, has yet to fail. And maybe she’s old enough to stop acting surprised by its efficacy.
...
Sitting high above the plaza, watching the two women below, Ana’s a little sore that there’s not a medal for matchmaking. She positions her eye at the scope and, with some well-earned pride, watches the silent scene play out.
...
They’re standing outside a busy cafe, holding conciliatory menus while they wait for a table on the packed, sun-dappled patio. When Fareeha looks up from her menu, Angela snaps a pic with her phone.
“Sneaky,” says Fareeha, eyes narrowing. “What’s that for?”
Angela taps quickly then stuffs the phone into her back pocket.
“For when you call,” she says simply, giving Fareeha a look deep enough to fall into. “So I can see your lovely face.”
Fareeha swallows the embers crawling up her throat. Lovely? Interesting.
She reaches for her own phone and says, “Mind if I take one of you?”
Nodding happily, ponytail swishing, Angela strikes a dramatic pose, one arm braced on the cafe wall and the other on her hip.
Instead of taking the picture, as if compelled by an unseen yet all-seeing eye, Fareeha takes some annoyingly sage advice.
She closes the polite distance meant for friendly photos and platonic lunches, pulling Angela’s warm body against her own. People around them are trying to get by, bustling in and out of the cafe door, but Fareeha’s eyes lose focus beyond anything that isn’t Angela’s face. The damp, darker hair at her temples. The flutter of surprised blue eyes. Her open mouth and the little crescent of teeth just beyond her lower lip.
“Can I kiss you?” Fareeha says, then closes her eyes. “Please say yes, or everything after this is going to be-”
“Do it,” Angela says, and wets her lips.
Fareeha eases her mouth over Angela’s, a light graze that turns heady, magnetic, until the shape of the kiss locks them down to nothing but this. It’s hot. What a dull, narrow word for how she tastes and the sounds in her throat, but it is. Hot. Angela runs her fingers up the side of Fareeha’s neck, diving into her hair, tilting her head. Fareeha’s tongue rushes ahead of thought, ahead of intent, finding Angela’s. Do it. And they do. They kiss well enough to shame any big-screen couple, and Fareeha’s back crams against the cafe wall under Angela’s weight.
When Angela pulls away, Fareeha remembers the phone in her hand. Shakily, she holds it up and snaps a photo of a kiss-raw angel with a mussed ponytail and a smile like a cat that’s found a sunbeam.
It’s the photo Fareeha will see, wants to see, anytime Angela calls.
...
Ana smiles to herself as she breaks down the rifle, slotting the scope into its foam-lined spot inside the case. The hardest jobs, the worthier ones, always hit her square in the chest, just under the vest. She’s never been ruled by ambition, never grubbed for accolades. But today, well, if her shoulder hadn’t been acting up, she’d reach around and pat her own back.